Two weeks before the gates open, a festival site plan usually starts to take on a life of its own. One version has already been sent to the authorities, another has gone to the technical contractor, the sponsor has received yet another PDF, and the most up-to-date changes are known by the person who moved the backstage area yesterday because it turned out that an articulated truck could not fit on the planned service road.
And this is exactly the problem PlanPlace is designed to solve.
The goal is not to stop the plan from changing. At events of this scale, that would be unrealistic. The goal is to make sure that every change is immediately visible in one place, instead of triggering another round of updates to PDFs, spreadsheets and presentations.
A festival plan is no longer just a drawing
In practice, several completely different teams use the same site plan.
Security focuses on entrances and sectors. The technical team cares about power and access roads. The sanitation supplier needs to know how many toilets are required and where they should be placed. Catering checks its zones. Emergency services need a clear view of evacuation routes and access roads.
If each of these pieces of information lives in a separate file, the organiser stops managing the event and starts managing document versions.
PlanPlace takes a different approach: first you create one shared site plan, and the remaining information is connected to it.
Move the food zone and the whole team sees the change. Add more toilets and they appear in the inventory. A subcontractor needs the latest layout? There is no need to send another attachment called “FINAL_v7”.
It may sound like a small difference at tool level, but it makes a major difference in day-to-day work.
The formal plan and the operational plan can come from the same source
For mass events, the site plan is also part of the documentation used in the approval process. It should clearly show, among other things, evacuation routes, emergency access, medical points, toilets and key safety infrastructure.
A common mistake is to prepare this plan separately as the “version for the authorities”.
The technical team then works on a different drawing.
It is much more practical to build the plan from the start so that safety, logistics and infrastructure all live in the same project. In PlanPlace, there is no need to recreate the current layout for every new document. The same map remains the point of reference throughout.
This becomes especially valuable when changes start to appear.
If the width of a service road needs to change or a fence line has to be moved, nobody needs to ask: “Which other files do we still need to update?”
The biggest benefit appears when things change
You can draw the first version of a site plan in many tools.
The real test comes later.
The stage turns out to be larger than expected. A sponsor changes the size of its activation zone. Another food truck joins the event. The medical point needs to move to keep ambulance access clear. The security contractor asks for a different barrier layout.
Each of these decisions affects several other elements.
That is why objects in PlanPlace are more than shapes on a map. They can be included in the inventory, contain information, comments and tasks. The team does not have to separately check whether a change on the map has already been reflected in a spreadsheet.
If the map contains 46 standard toilets and 6 accessible toilets, those numbers can go directly into the inventory.
After the layout changes, there is no need to count everything again.
Fewer questions like “Which tent do you mean?”
A large part of event communication refers to specific places.
“Move this generator farther away.”
“We need two more barriers here.”
“Has this tent’s power supply already been confirmed?”
In a messenger thread, comments like these lose context after a few days. Someone has to search the conversation, send a screenshot or ask which object the message referred to.
In PlanPlace, a comment can be attached directly to a specific object on the map. The same applies to notes and tasks.
That means the conversation about the plan actually happens on the plan, not somewhere next to it.
With larger teams, this quickly stops being a convenient extra and becomes a practical way to reduce messages, phone calls and misunderstandings.
Inventories that do not live a separate life
A list of required infrastructure often starts as a simple spreadsheet:
- 200 metres of barriers
- 30 tents
- 50 toilets
- 6 containers
- 4 generators
The problem appears after several layout changes.
Has the additional tent already been added to the table? Were the barriers at the technical entrance removed? Does the toilet count come from the latest version?
In PlanPlace, the inventory is generated from the objects placed on the plan. It can then be exported to CSV or XLSX and sent to a supplier.
From the organiser’s perspective, the key benefit is that the map and the spreadsheet no longer need to be kept in sync manually.
This is one of those features whose value grows with the scale of the event. With ten objects, you can count everything yourself. With several hundred, it starts to matter where the numbers in the order actually came from.
Everyone can see the plan, but not everyone has to see everything
A festival plan is shared with many companies and institutions.
The difficulty is not sharing the file itself. The difficulty is keeping it up to date afterwards.
If a contractor received a PDF on Monday and the layout changed on Wednesday, someone has to remember to send a new version.
With a link to the current plan, that extra step disappears.
In PlanPlace, external users can be given access to the plan itself without seeing internal comments, tasks or team notes. Access can be password-protected and later disabled.
The technical contractor can therefore check the current layout instead of working from an attachment buried in an old email.
One plan becomes the centre of event preparation
The biggest value is not faster drawing.
It is reducing the number of places where the same information has to be maintained.
The map shows the layout. The inventory shows what is on it. Comments keep track of decisions. Tasks show what still needs to be done. A shared link gives subcontractors access to the latest version.
Everything refers back to the same plan.
So when part of the infrastructure has to be moved two days before the event, the team does not have to start another round of questions:
“Did we update the PDF?”
“Did someone change the spreadsheet?”
“Has the technical team received the new version?”
“Does security know about the change?”
The change is made where it actually belongs — on the map.
What should you check before closing the plan?
| Area | What to check |
|---|---|
| Access and circulation | Are service, evacuation and fire access routes still clear after all changes? |
| Audience flow | Do entrances and exits have enough capacity? |
| Infrastructure | Are all objects on the map included in the current inventory? |
| Safety | Do medical teams and emergency services have clear access? |
| Logistics | Do deliveries and backstage areas avoid conflicts with audience movement? |
| Team | Do open comments and tasks have clear owners? |
| Subcontractors | Are they using the current view of the plan rather than an old attachment? |
A plan that works together with the team
At a festival, the site plan is never truly “finished”. It changes right up until the gates open, and often during build-up as well.
That is why creating a perfect first drawing matters less than establishing a workflow that handles continuous change well.
PlanPlace connects the map, objects, inventories and team communication in one place. The plan therefore becomes more than another document in a project folder — it becomes a tool the team can actually use to run preparations for the event.
And that is when the question stops being who has the latest file.
Everyone is looking at the same plan.
